Spanish
Washington.- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) urged this Friday to design and precisely target industrial policies, which are experiencing a strong global resurgence to improve productivity, resilience and autonomy of countries, to avoid collateral risks ranging from inflation to the waste of public resources.
In the preview of one of the chapters of its upcoming Outlook Report, the entity insists that the global bet, exacerbated since the pandemic by heavily subsidized industrial policies, is especially noteworthy in sectors such as energy, clean technologies, and manufacturing, with a focus on efficiency and performance, economic growth, or the protection of manufacturing jobs.
However, a goal that is repeatedly insisted upon in the current context of geopolitical tensions is to achieve less dependence on imports in the energy field, as it estimates that a third of all new measures adopted between 2009 and 2022 were directed at this area.
This preview of the report, which will be presented in full on October 14th during the IMF annual meetings, seeks, based on data analysis and with special emphasis on successful industrialization processes that closed technological and economic gaps such as those of Brazil and South Korea in the seventies, to point out the conditions that make it more likely that these policies will be successful.
In the long run, the text warns, investments can improve productivity, "but this entails a rise in consumer prices during the growth phase".
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These policies can also generate high public spending, an important aspect "in a context of high levels of debt and limited fiscal margin in many countries" and, while they may boost production in the target sector, the study points out that this benefit must be weighed against other factors, such as the fiscal cost, the increase in the CPI or the possible misappropriation of resources. The chapter concludes by emphasizing that industrial policy can be valuable as long as it is based on a rigorous diagnosis, is precisely targeted, and is integrated within a framework of broader institutional reforms. According to the analysis, policymakers must keep in mind the balance between public spending and long-term economic transformation, sectoral benefits versus overall efficiency, or the misallocation of resources that collaterally affects other sectors.
